Saturday, June 22, 2013

There is no stopping me now!

Having finished the Ghostbuster's car, I thought I ought to get on with another model so that I would have something to take to Clacton next month. Being a bit of a masochist, I chose the most difficult model I have - well, actually, I didn't! There is nothing difficult about 1/144th scale aircraft.

My "brave" choice was an Eduard 1/144th Junkers Ju-52 - 'Tante Ju' as it was known to the German soldier on the ground. This is a small kit but extremely well moulded. It went together very easily with just a bit of filler on the wing roots. The one big problem I had was that the undercarriage kept collapsing. I sorted this out by putting some brass rods alongside each wheel set so that the aircraft sat on the rod and not on the wheel. Once painted, these really do not show.

Well, here it is.



I must admit that I chose the simplest camo pattern as I have rarely done German WWII aircraft so need a bit of practice. Still, I think this looks OK.

What next? I am dithering between the Eduard European Theatre P38 Lightning and the Eduard European F-16. These are both in 1/48th scale and both are rather special kits. They both are kits made by others (P-38 is an Academy kit for instance) but contain lots of extras such as etched brass, Brassin resin additions, replacement cockpits and highly colourful decals. I am very tempted towards the F-16 in Danish colours - purely because it "doesn't" have a resin cockpit. It does have tons of etched brass though :-(.

I feel that I should really finish off the resin COD Fairey Gannet that has been sitting around needing its wing folds finished for at least 18 months, if not more!

I will keep the blog up to date so you know where I am going.
David

Thursday, June 06, 2013

Finally, finally, finally, I have finished a model!

Yes, Ghostbusters are GO! Valerie bought me this kit for Christmas. The first box arrived and when I opened it on Christmas Day, the insides were packed so tight that the roof of the body had been crushed downwards. A quick call to Creative Models - speaking to my old mate Richard - got another box off in the post.

It is an old kit but for all that it goes together very well. The decals have been re-printed so there is no trouble with getting these to settle OK. The biggest problems are that it is a car, so the bodywork has to be top notch, and it is painted white! My method of managing a car is to paint it with matt paint and then give it about 6 coats of Klear applied with a brush. That way, you get a deep gloss and no brush marks. Being white, I used Vallejo's white polyurethane primer which is absolutely brilliant.

I did my usual with the chrome and stripped it all off to be replaced with Alclad.

So, what went wrong - something always does? Nothing too bad except that some glue ran down the bodywork inside what gluing up the chassis. It proceeded to run over one of the windows so there is that which can be seen. I used superglue to fix the spot lights on the roof the first time and then broke one off so a bit of the white paint got pulled away. I lost an inside of one of the wheels, plus one of the bullet ends to the tail lights pinged away. Fortunately, I had the second box so I pinched these two items from there.

Anyway, this is what it looks like.





The sticker in the back window says "I Love Model Cars". This is an addition that is NOT on the original. Overall, I enjoyed making it. It was a simple kit and there was little that was difficult or awkward. My next project is going to be a 1/144th scale Ju52 in North Afrika camo. Should be fun.

Don't forget, you can click on any image and see a bigger one.

I hope it won't be so long next time before I post a blog entry.

David